Street Epistemology: James & Barbara | Contemplating Contentious Differences
What is Street Epistemology?
IOW, Street Epistemology is a nuanced technique for engaging in civil dialogue with people who might disagree with you on a topic that is important to you. Rather than have it out with your opposition, it's a cooperative means of helping them explore their own beliefs. It was first outlined in the book, "A Manual For Creating Atheists," by Peter Boghossian. Spoiler: the title turns out to be a bait-and-switch. Street Epistemology is actually about the best practices of leading people to more rational beliefs. Atheism is what you would be led to by Street Epistemology as long as it is a more rational view than what you started with.
The creator of this video, Anthony Magnabosco, is a master of Street Epistemology. In fact, Anthony is the leading revolutionary who put Street Epistemology from paper to practice. In this video, James openly accepts that the primary reason he believes in a God is because he was raised in it. He also accepts that he can be wrong and that there is nothing wrong with people who do not believe. Barbara agrees. Anthony then sticks the hard question, "If it's possible that the belief is not true, and you're believing in it because you were raised that way, why would you hold on to the belief?" To which James responds with "Because something/somebody is leading me."
There is the beauty of Street Epistemology in my eyes. To me and a few of you readers who love deep thinking, the error in critical thought that James has made here is screaming, "you just said you believe in it because you believe in it!" At the same time, James is sweet and kind. Not dumb, and more importantly, he's not dishonest. This is cognitive dissonance on his part and he's dealing with it right before your eyes by talking about it, unbeknownst to him. Even if James never changes his mind or position, you have to give him credit for trying to think more critically about something he admits he doesn't spend enough time thinking about.
As an Atheist and Street Epistomology proponent who believes that faith and Gods are ridiculous ideas, I respect any theist who can be honest about why they believe. I have learned from engaging in Street Epistemology that the conclusions we arrive at are not nearly as interesting as the the honest reasons of how we got to them. It transforms every harsh disagreement I have into an enjoyable conversation where I appreciate that there is someone to oppose my views with nuance and allow me to reconsider if I could be wrong.
Hope you enjoyed the video. Please feel free to get some conversations going in the comments. You can learn more about Street Epistemology from the above link. I plan on posting these videos regularly to expose this nuanced idea to the masses of Steemit.
Credit: The video was posted with permission from it's creator.
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Watched the video. Glad I sat through it, even though it was much longer than the 5 min on Anthony's stopwatch! I'm usually more combative than that, though I try not to be, and watching this was like a small class on how to improve myself, or at least be better able to be like Anthony when I want to. It's funny how at the end of the video he's almost autistically honest about his encounter with the couple (as if the couple won't watch his video), while he was being very tactful with them before. One moment I would've liked him to have probed further happened at the 8:28 mark, when James said "I would never tell anyone to believe what I believe, because God gives us that freedom to choose". And he made similar pronouncements before and after. At one of those points I would've liked to have asked him if he intends to teach his faith to his children, or if he'll let them decide for themselves, by studying various belief systems, including the absence of belief. (Cf Dawkins' 'religious indoctrination is child abuse' argument.)
Yes, Anthony is using a bit of trickery by convincing them to stay for 5 minutes and then asking them if they are hooked yet.
I'm with you in that I want to push a little harder than Anthony's style, but the fact is that it works to get them thinking and you never want to risk making them defensive, else you get the backlash effect. Much of what was established in the book was actually taken from psychology.
Boghossian even did a prison study where he managed to improve the behavior of inmates by helping them examine their own beliefs, such as one in the book who expected people to respect him. Peter asked, "But, hypothetically, if you happened to do something that wasn't deserving of respect, then you wouldn't really expect people to respect you for it, right?" After a few rounds, the inmate figured it out, and agreed. Just like how James here was sure that he'll be thinking about this encounter for a while and enjoyed it. People are against being judged or blamed. They aren't against examining their cognitive dissonance.
I think there are many defenses against coming up anywhere close to dissonance - fear of being judged or blamed are taught behaviours in many respects; here in SE Asia they are taught not to "lose face". That someone can suspend such reactions and be led to some revelation is interesting, though.
I have come to the conclusion that this is fundamentally an energetics problem; the brain tries to minimise its energy use, therefore most things that can be automated will be automated - this includes our beliefs.
BTW, this may be amusing; we may end up joining each other's projects. As we're rarely on chat at the same time I'll pin this here.
"You may be interested in a new project I have started to help minnows further: Minnows Accelerator Project [August 2017 Signups]"
Thanks! Energetics is an interesting way to look at it. I'm more partial to the social constructs of "saving face" plus a willingness to suspect someone of outright treason to the group is they voice disagreement as major causes. I've found that even for myself, being rational is a skill that takes practice. You have to tell yourself to be proud of when you recognize that you were wrong. You have to unlearn the offense response and to learn the response of gratitude over anyone who would challenge your thinking.
Quite interesting!
Interesting!
Is that a kind of dentistry?
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